Uwe Gellner

The Dresden artist Max Uhlig (b. 1937) created one of the greatest window cycles of contemporary art for the Gothic Church of Saint John in Magdeburg. Vines and coloured foliage together with lines in expressive rhythms which are a revelation in their incisiveness, fill a window area of some 350 square metres with colours and immerse the interior of the church in light. The abstract cycle of six windows in colour and seven in black and white, each 13 metres high, tells of the rebirth of the former parish church in the heart of Magdeburg, destroyed during the Second World War and rebuilt after 1992. The dark earth tones and the luminous yellows and blues interspersed with fiery reds contrast with the vines climbing upwards in the choir windows, which are depicted entirely in black. Max Uhlig is one of the last representatives of plein-air painting in modern art and shows in this magnificent volume about his latest masterpiece that he is at the very height of our times. Languages: English and German

What is Germany like, how long, how big, and how diverse? Olaf Wegewitz, an artist, natural philosopher, and poet, set out in the summer of 2009 to pursue answers to these questions. His route took him 1340 kilometers along the 11th line of longitude, from Fehmarn by the Baltic Sea to the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain. Olaf Wegewitz surveyed the country physically and artistically, along with its flora and fauna, and then captured his impressions in a 100-meter-long painting. The book shows the complete sequence of this fascinating painting, presenting coasts, lakes and rivers, meadows, forests and mountains, fields and villages along the way. Using delicate, gestural, expressive, dramatic, and concentrated strokes of the brush, Olaf Wegewitz paints a picture of Germany as we have never seen it before, with a close-up view of its landscape and nature, and what this may mean for our future. Apart from presenting the whole painting, the book contains a number of sketches, frottages made on walks, poetic texts, and an interview with the artist.